Thursday, December 8, 2016

My experiences while serving as an At-Large member of the Gloucester County, Virginia Public Utilities Advisory Committee (The first in a series of articles about my experiences and findings)

I was appointed to the
Gloucester County Public Utilities Advisory Committee (PUAC) in August 2014, as
an At-Large member. From the outside looking in, it appeared to me that Gloucester’s Utility Department (Utilities) was not being
managed very well. Being that I am now retired due to disabilities and possess
knowledge and experience in water, sewer, and many facets of business
management, employee and equipment utilization, safety and a few other areas; I
was looking forward to and excited about the opportunity to give back to the
community where I grew up.

From the very first meeting I
began to realize the PUAC did not serve any realistic purpose and had no true
sense of direction. From my very first visits to Utilities’ office, equipment
and storage yard, water treatment plants and sewer pumping stations, I could tell
everything had been neglected for numerous years. I also noted numerous
workplace safety violations which I immediately shared with the Board of
Supervisors and appropriate members of County staff. After thinking about the
situation for a while I decided I would offer some suggestions to make things
better, instead of trying to place blame on those responsible for the excessive neglect of Gloucester taxpayer's and utility customer's infrastructure.

One of my first suggestions
as a committee member was the development and implementation of a Utilities
enhancement program. The following was my proposal:

GloucesterCounty Public
Utilities Enhancement

(Proposal)

As we all know Utilities is not financially self
sufficient, numerous areas have degraded for one reason or another over the
years and systems expansion is stagnant.
Developing and implementing an enhancement plan utilizing an ownership
approach will help considerably in turning Utilities into an efficient and self
supporting department. In order to
establish an ownership relationship with Utilities, each committee member would
have to look at Utilities as if it were their own personal investment or
business.

Each committee member would have to become familiar with
Utilities’:

-missions

-leaders

-assets

-intradepartmental roles in completing missions

-weaknesses

-strengths

-finances

-growth potentials

Collectively the committee would have to identify the
areas in which each member has experience or expertise so those talents can be
applied accordingly throughout the enhancement process. For example; if one or two committee members have
experience in office management they could focus on areas related to such.

All intradepartmental leaders would need to give a short
briefing to the committee in which they define their areas of responsibility,
statistics related to their areas, their manpower, etc. After such briefings, there would need to be
an open discussion period for all of the leaders and the committee. The primary purpose for such briefings and
discussion period would be to establish professional, face to face
relationships among those responsible for the functionality and care of Gloucester’s
utility assets.

Each committee member would need to visit the varying
sections of Utilities at least one time per month. Such visits would serve to educate committee
members on what is entailed in performing day to day operations and will help
instill the ownership concept. When
employees see people taking interest in what they are doing they tend to
perform better. Such visits would need
to be completely observational and educational in nature and all observations
and suggestions would need to be presented to the committee before shared with
others. The only exception to this would
be for safety concerns. Situations where
a person or persons’ safety is at risk should always be brought to
administration’s attention immediately, through whatever means available.

A high level of participation and dedication would be
required from all Utilities employees and the advisory committee to insure
success of an enhancement program. The
frequency of committee meetings would have to change from bi-monthly to monthly
and there would likely be frequent special meetings as well. Increasing the number of committee meetings
would be necessary to heighten focus, enhance the committees’ knowledge base,
expedite the enhancement process and establish and maintain forward momentum
through all process phases.

Once the above steps are in motion, the committee would
then be able to begin to establish concise goals and desired results of the
enhancement plan. That is when the real
work would begin.

No interest was shown in
developing such an enhancement plan as it never even made it off the table.
Changing the frequency of the meetings did not fly either, as it was unanimously
voted down by my fellow committee members. I sensed my fellow committee members
were unwilling to dedicate the necessary time to fulfill such a plan. From that
time forward, the PUAC basically continued along the same path I can only
assume it was traveling prior to my appointment; one of no direction or
purpose. There will undoubtedly be those who will claim the PUAC has and
continues to serve a worthwhile purpose and that everything is fine within Gloucester’s Utility Department. If that were the factual case,
none of the articles that will be contained in this series would be necessary. In
upcoming articles I will share some of my concerns about safety,
accountability, water and sewer rates and a few other topics. If you pay taxes
or pay for water or sewer in GloucesterCounty, you shouldn’t miss any of the articles.